The town I grew up in had quite a few rag-pickers and dumpster divers. It's a living for those willing to brave occasionally dangerous conditions (toxic things in dumpsters is relatively common, after all). A gem from the article:

While researching his book, Humes obtained what was one of the last interviews with William Rathje, the late University of Arizona garbage researcher. During that conversation, the archaeologist said that US overconsumption reminded him of the ancient civilizations he had studied, in which the moment that extravagance began to outstrip resources always seemed to signal the descent into contraction and decline. In Garbology, Humes urged a break with that historical pattern and an all-out commitment to cutting waste. But in his conversation with Rathje, the university researcher noted one big problem with this idea: “No great civilization of the past has ever pulled this off,” Humes says Rathje told him. “None.”

People sometimes wonder when I say that the state never can be reformed long-term towards liberty, I say look at history. It's never happened once, ever. Society's slide into authoritariansim is irreversable until revolution or collapse.